- 著者
-
三枝 有
- 出版者
- 日本法政学会
- 雑誌
- 法政論叢 (ISSN:03865266)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.40, no.1, pp.66-78, 2003-11-05 (Released:2017-11-01)
The act of child abuse is often performed by the protector of the abused child under the veil of "discipline", so the abuser does not have the strong sense of guilt, nor is the abused conscious of the fact that he or she is the target of a crime. That is why child abuse is called "a hidden crime". Most of the acts of child abuse are performed behind closed doors and continue for a certain period of time. In most cases such acts are not discovered by an outsider easily. Moreover the act of child abuse is performed between the special relationship such as the relationship of a parent and a child, so that it is difficult for the abused children to recognize themselves as a victim and the children tend to be resigned to their situation. Not only that, the abused children often form the sense of guilt because they feel they are also responsible for such an act. In 1961 C.H. Kempe advocated "the Battered-Child Syndrome" concerning the actual conditions of child abuse which has the special characteristic of a hidden crime. Nearly 40 years later, finally in Japan, "the Law concerning the Prevention and Others of Child Abuse (the Child Abuse Prevention Law)" was passed and effected at the plenary session of the House of Representatives on May 17, 2000. Since the enforcement of the Law, the number of acknowledged cases of child abuse and the number of arrests have been increasing rapidly, so it is true that the very enactment of the Law has promoted the notifications of child abuse cases and the arrests of abusers. It is also true that in the Japanese society where Confucian ideas still remain in people's mind, like in Korea, child abuse by its own parent was a taboo which we should not talk about or even think about. However, realities were opposite. In this paper, I will discuss the role that criminal punishment should play to prevent child abuse, while grasping the actual conditions of child abuse today and the Japanese ideas that have led to such conditions. As a conclusion I would like to propose the active introduction of punitive provisions of the laws by demonstrating that conventional punishment which emphasizes its function of sanction should emphasize its function of forming the new sense of norms in child abuse and furthermore that punishment should actively perform its supplementary function to facilitate welfare-oriented intervention by the government going beyond its general preventive function. Contents 1. Introduction-Actual Conditions of Child Abuse 2. The Abuse Prevention Law and Punishment 3. The Role of the Criminal Law in Child Abuse 4. Conclusion-the New Function of the Criminal Law